Brent and I started doing comedy together in San Francisco, along with Kamau, many years ago. People say that Brent is weird, though, to be fair, he denies being weird, which may be the weirdest thing about him.

It's not a controversial position that he's one of the most innovative comedy performers in all of standup. Nobody does what he does. He's been compared to, of course, Andy Kaufman — he won the Andy Kaufman Award. Rowan Atkinson is another big influence of his. He's like an experiential comedy performer, if that makes any sense. I always used to call it comedy through the looking glass. Brent and I used to go out on the road together, and I'd watch these crowds in middle America shift their brains to the self that he creates. He does a lot of voices and things you would never really consider jokes, per se, even though he has jokes. He always has potty humor. It's avant-garde with a heavy dose of fecal matter.

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One of my favorite laughs that he gets — we used to do black clubs together in Oakland. We all learned how to sharpen that particular sword, and one of the best laughs Brent used to get is when he would step out onstage. Before he even said anything, the crowd would already be laughing. He looked so incongruous — a very slight, substitute teacher-looking guy. He would have these black crowds on their feet.

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